From the Deepest Coma, New Brain Activity Found

-- This year, a few entrants to Nikon's Small World Competition were able to capture images they claimed were the first of their kind.
In some instances this simply meant a traditional subject was photographed using a new technique. In other cases, the competitor captured the best image of a subject to date. Finally, some competitors claim to have taken the first ever photograph of their subject.
In this image, fossilized Turitella agate contains the remains of ancient freshwater snails known as Elimia tenera and seed shrimp called ostracods -- both representing perhaps a very early form of life.
Photographic Technique: Stereomicroscopy
Magnification: 7x
PHOTOS: It's a Nikon Small World After All

Douglas Moore, University of Wisconsin, Steve

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The blood-brain barrier in a live zebra fish embryo plays a critical role in neurological function and disease. Drs. Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. developed transgenic zebra fish to visualize the development of this structure in a live animal.
Photographic Technique: Confocal
Magnification: 20x

Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor, St. Jude

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Bat embryos of the species Molossus rufus, the black mastiff bat, as shown inside the womb. Dorit Hockman, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., placed embryos of different ages side-by-side to follow the process of development normally hidden from view.
Photographic Technique: Brightfield

This image is thought to be the first confocal picture of chewing lice of the common buzzard, or Colpocephalum platystomus.
Photographic Technique: Confocal, Autofluorescence
Magnification: 10x

Gyorgyi Zseli, Institute of Experimental Medi

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This is the dorsal view of a newly discovered deep-sea copepod, the Pontostratiotes. Copepods are a kind of plankton and are an important prey item for fish, whales and other ocean organisms.
Photographic Technique: Confocal
Magnification: 10x
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When a patient's brain falls completely silent, and electrical recordings devices show a flat line, reflecting a lack of brain activity, doctors consider the patient to have reached the deepest stage of a coma. However, new findings suggest there can be a coma stage even deeper than this flat line -- and that brain activity can ramp up again from this state.

In the case of one patient in a drug-induced coma, and in subsequent experiments on cats, the researchers found that after deepening the coma by administering a higher dose of drugs, the silent brain started showing minimum but widespread neural activity across the brain, according to the study published today (Sept. 18) in the journal PLOS ONE.

The findings were based on measures of the brain's electrical activity, detected by electroencephalography (EEG), which shows various waveforms. In comatose patients, depending on the stage of their coma, the waveforms are altered. As the coma deepens, the EEG device will eventually show a flat line instead of a wave -- this stage is considered to be the turning point between a living brain and a deceased brain.

"Flat line was the deepest known form of coma," said study researcher Florin Amzica, neurophysiologist at Université de Montréal.

The new study shows "there's a deeper form of coma that goes beyond the flat line, and during this state of very deep coma, cortical activity revives," Amzica said. He noted the findings apply to patients in a medically induced coma with healthy brains that are receiving blood and oxygen. The conclusions may not extend to cases of comatose patients who have suffered major brain damage, he said.

The newly discovered coma state is characterized by electrical waves called Nu-complexes that are unlike other waveforms generated by the brain during known coma states, sleep or wakefulness. These waves originate in a deep brain region called the hippocampus, and then spread across the cortex (the brain’s outermost layer), according to the study.